Laz's TVDU headcanons 5
There is a lot of Nadia stuff that could be built on, because she is a 500 year old vampire, born in 1490, presumably had a child, then became a vampire.
My guess is she grew up knowing that she was of Petrova bloodline, but left at an Orthodox church and most likely raised by nuns during the “Turkish Yoke” which spans over Bulgaria from 1396-1878, and was a very dark time for Bulgaria, as Bulgarian Independence was officially snuffed out, after the sieges in Tǔrnovo and the capture of the Bulgarian kindgom in Vidin in 1393. Note, Nadia is born almost a 100 years after that exactly [1490]. During this, the population of Bulgaria remained mostly loyal to the Orthodox Church (mainly in the north and west), for the Turks didn’t actually force many Bulgarians to convert to Islam, and many Turkish peasants didn’t immigrate to Bulgaria, and if they did it was really only to Southern and Eastern parts of the country.
The Petrova family was wealthy, that much is clear. Which means we can assume either resided in Vidin or Sofia, and probably considered part of the belgerbeg “lord of lords”. Which again makes me believe to some levels that Katerina was born in a Christian family, whom also upheld their Slavic identity and heritage, by the way they spoke Bulgarian and their names. (A part of me does headcanon that Katerina’s mother was Ukrainian. [Her mother could also be named Teodora, as a mini headcanon]. But "Katerina" is not really that Bulgarian [not until much later at least], and usually it was only a diminutive, until later on in history—according to my research atleast, but she would either be Ekaterina or Yekaterina, the former being Russian, which feels less likely than Ukrainian).
So Katerina’s full name was probably Yekaterina, with her family using the diminutives of Katerina, Katenka, Katya, and Katyusha by the members of her family. It’s possible that she has been called all of these names.
Her father was Petar, or Pero by his wife and close friends and family. As her last name is Petrova, which is patronymic of her father’s name.
Nadia is a diminutive of Nadezhda, and she probably also goes by Nada. She may have gone by Nadezhda Yekaterinova for a while, before deciding Petrova when she discovered her mother was a vampire and wanted to find her.
She probably was named that by the church. And the nuns may have even told her of her family. My guess is she was married of, had a child, had vampire blood in her system and died of childbirth. Maybe her midwife was a vampire—- and that's how she discovered about vampires, maybe even discovered her mother being one this way, and that was how her search began. I wonder if maybe Elijah sent his own vampires to Bulgaria to watch out for Katerina, during the hunt, just in case, and they made lives for themselves (hence my belief she was a member of Elijah’s bloodline).
I do like the idea she raised her child. And had to watch her own human kid outgrow her and grow old. We don’t have many storylines with that, and I think that could be interesting for her. A sort of reverse of Katherine’s.
Speaking of Katherine! And actually more Klaus, did you know she was turned in April (April 6th to be precise), and met him in his birthday? Did you also know you can discover full moons form any time in history?
We also know that the full moon in 1492 April was on the twelth, and the full moon in March was the 14th. And so Klaus’s birthday must be between those dates because he wouldn’t have waited longer than he had too, and it was probably a waiting game for the next full moon. So he is a March baby (an Aries is quite fitting for him ngl).
So say Nadia was born December 20th 1490, and Katerina was exiled February 3, 1491. She probably didn’t get a ship to leave the Aegean sea until April (let's say the 15th) of 1491. And it took her to sail to Rome for 14 days. She stayed there for 6 weeks trying to survive, before seducing a traveling aristocrat, the Pierce family, who brought her to England in December 1491. She fills in the role as a mistress for the man, but discovers how his father wants to hang her for being a whore, and she convinces her lover to kill his father. He does and marries her. But that gets his brother to kill him (bc duh she's been causing conflict between brothers since 1491). She ends up being the head woman of the house despite this, convincing the court ( probably should research that?) the brother killed the head of the house in jealousy and got him executed in June 1491. She lives in high society and then meets Trevor, they start courting, and in March 1492 she is invited to the Lord's Niklaus’s birthday party March 21th, 1492 (because this man is so equinox coded let's be real). She is there for 18 today for discovering what she is wanted for, giving her just enough time to woo Elijah.